The spectacle looks from one vantage like a horrifying break with soft-focus American history. But there are also obvious continuities, not just with the country’s long history of vigilantism but also with a very recent period of militarism: empowered mercenaries treating the cities in which they’ve been deployed like intimidating war zones, seeing opposition and hostility around every corner and treating anyone who dares stand in their way as a terrorist or insurrectionist. This isn’t border enforcement; it is a kind of blundering counterinsurgency.